Alexander Cameron (priest)

Fr. Alexander Cameron SJ
Genuflecting on the eve of the Battle of Prestonpans
Scottish Priest, Missionary, Military Chaplain
Born	1701 Achnacarry Castle, Lochaber, Scotland
Died	19 October 1746 Gravesend, Kent, England
Venerated in	Catholic Church
Feast	19th October
Patronage	Difficult Conversions, Military Chaplains, New Evangelisation, Scottish Highlands

Alexander Cameron of Lochiel, S.J. (Scottish Gaelic: Maighstir Sandaidh, an t-Athair Alasdair Camshròn) (1701 – 19 October 1746) was a Scottish nobleman, who became a Roman Catholic priest of the Society of Jesus.

Cameron was born at Achnacarry Castle in Lochaber and was the third son of John Cameron of Lochiel, the 18th chief of Clan Cameron. After being fostered within the clan and raised by relatives in nearby Glen Dessary, he travelled in both Catholic Europe and the British West Indies. While employed at the House of Stuart government in exile in the Palazzo Muti in Rome as "an honourary gentleman of the bedchamber" to Prince James Francis Edward Stuart and Princess Maria Clementina Sobieska, he converted from the high church and non-juring Scottish Episcopal Church to Roman Catholicism.

After attending the Scots College, Douai and ordination as a priest, he was ordered by the Society of Jesus in 1741 to return to the Scottish Gàidhealtachd. While living with two others priests in a mountain cave in Glen Cannich, Cameron ran a ministry throughout The Aird and Strathglass as an outlawed "heather priest" for the illegal Catholic Church. Lord Lovat credited Alexander Cameron with doing the priestly work of ten men. According to reports by the local Presbyterian Synods, Cameron convinced so many Chisholms and Frasers to become, "perverted to Popery", that he unintentionally provoked a 1744 government crackdown at the insistence of the established church, which ultimately forced him to flee to his native district in the Rough Bounds of Lochaber.

Cameron was assigned by his kinsman, Bishop Hugh MacDonald, as a military chaplain to the regiment of the Jacobite Army commanded by his elder brother, Donald Cameron of Lochiel, the 19th Chief of Clan Cameron. Alexander Cameron served in this position for the rest of the Jacobite rising of 1745.

After the Battle of Culloden, Cameron was captured while in hiding from the British Army at the White Sands of Morar. He was handed over to Royal Navy Captain John Fergussone, who remains one of the most notorious figures in the government's post- Culloden pacification campaign in the Highlands and Islands and who received the nickname, "the Black Captain of the Forty-Five".

Despite the efforts of Commander in Chief for Scotland Lord Albemarle to have him taken ashore for proper medical treatment, Cameron died of prisoner abuse, the deliberately insanitary rations, and the conditions of his four month incarceration aboard Fergussone's prison hulk H.M.S. Furnace, then riding at anchor off Gravesend in the River Thames.

In 2020, Alexander Cameron began being promoted by the Knights of St Columba council at the University of Glasgow for canonization as a Catholic martyr, "with the hope that he will become a great saint for Scotland and that our nation will merit from his intercession."

Early life

Achnacarry Castle

Family background

Alexander Cameron was born in September 1701 at Achnacarry Castle. He was son of John Cameron, tanist of Lochiel. Alexander Cameron's mother, Lady Isobel Campbell of Lochnell, came from a cadet branch of Clan Campbell and was, through maternal descent, the granddaughter of the 7th Chief of Clan Stewart of Appin. She was also the younger sister of Sir Donald Campbell, 7th of Lochnell, who commanded one of the Independent Highland Companies in the service of the House of Hanover in the 1745 rising and became important to Scottish Gaelic literature after it ended. Sir Donald was named in Jacobite poet Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair's 1751 anti-Whig and anti-Campbell satirical Aisling poem An Airc ("The Ark") as one of a long list of those whom the Bard viewed as honourable Campbells who, during the second Great Flood prophesied to imminently strike all upon Clan Campbell's lands, were to be welcomed aboard the new Ark. Two of Alexander Cameron's other maternal uncles converted to Catholicism. One of them was Fr. Colin Campbell, who became an admired leader among his fellow outlawed Roman Catholic priests of the Highland District, but whose private crusade against Jansenism, or Crypto-Calvinism, among the priests of that same District has since been characterized, by at least one recent historian, as a witch hunt.

According to historian Odo Blundell of Fort Augustus Abbey, "The Camerons [had] been Catholic for several generations after the Reformation, whilst later they were supporters of the Episcopal Church of Scotland against the Covenant... Indeed, the Camerons, surrounded as they were on three sides by the great Catholic clans of the MacDonalds of Clanranald, Glengarry, and Keppoch, had early learned those principles of toleration which distinguished many districts of the Highlands long before they were known elsewhere in Britain."

Alexander was the younger brother of Donald Cameron of Lochiel, who would later become the chief of Clan Cameron and lead the Clan's regiment in the Jacobite Uprising of 1745. His other siblings included John Cameron, 1st of Fassiefern (1698–1785) and Dr. Archibald Cameron (1707–1753).

Even though the Lochiel family appeared on the surface to be Presbyterians and belonged officially to "the Kirk by Law Established", Alexander Cameron was raised within a non-juring and high church Episcopalian family with a history of opposing Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate, the 1688 revolution, the post-1714 House of Hanover, and the ruling Whig political party.

Early life

The river below Glendessary House, Lochaber

Shortly after his birth, Alexander Cameron was given by his father in fosterage, as was traditional practice among Irish and Scottish clans, to be raised by relatives at nearby Glendessary House. At the same time, Alexander's immediate family ties were not severed and remained very close. He would still have been a very young child when his father led the clan during the Jacobite rising of 1715 and also that of 1719, and was only 12-years old when his father, who had always had a particular affection for him, left Scotland for what would become permanent exile in France, while Alexander's mother, Lady Isobel, remained behind at Achnacarry Castle. For this reason as well as the senile dementia of his grandfather, the famed Ewen Cameron of Lochiel, Alexander's eldest brother, Donald Cameron of Lochiel, led Clan Cameron as de facto chief.

During the 1754 trial of Alexander Cameron's brother, John Cameron of Fassiefern, Donald Cameron of Clunes testified that Alexander Cameron had been left a bond of 8,000 merks by his father. Clunes further testified, "That John MacIngveg (Scottish Gaelic: Iain mac Aonghas Bheag), wadsetter of Glendessarie (sic), was foster-father to the said Alexander Cameron; that is, after Alexander was weaned, he was sent to Glendessarie House, to be brought up there until he should be fit for Schools. That upon that occasion, according to the customs of the country, Glendessarie set apart thirty cows, and Lochiel, the father, the like number, and they were all kept at Glendessarie, and the produce of these cows is intended to be for Stock to the infant when he sets up in the world; and he knows that when Alexander came to be fit to go to school, he was sent to the schools at Glendessarie's expense; and that when he went abroad, that stock was disposed of, and the price given to Alexander, and that it amounted to £150 Sterling and upwards."

In addition to being taught almost from birth how to live off the land, how to withstand cold and other hardships, and how to always follow the code of conduct demanded of a Scottish clan chief, Cameron was also educated by tutors. He later attended a boarding school at St. Ninian's near Stirling. He was later described as multilingual and, in addition to his native Scottish Gaelic language, also spoke and wrote Ecclesiastical Latin, English, French, and Italian.

As a young man, Cameron travelled to the British West Indies to visit the Colony of Jamaica, where the plantations his eldest brother had purchased as an investment were managed by their youngest brother, Ewan Cameron. Alexander had been sent to Jamaica on family business to, "scrape together moneys", but he later recalled that his tour of this, "most beautiful of countreys", (sic) did not give him the happiness he sought and he accordingly returned to Scotland. He then briefly served in the French Royal Army, where he was granted an officer's rank. According to biographer Monsignor Thomas Wynne, "In which regiment of the army Alexander served, and where he travelled, is not recorded. His experiences of the rawness of barrack-room life would be a practical preparation for what lay ahead of him. He would find himself very much at home among his fellow soldiers in the future when he was to serve in the Prince Charles army."

It is known that around 1727, Alexander Cameron had what is believed to have been an emotional reunion with his exiled father in France.

Conversion to Catholicism

Palazzo Muti, Rome.

After this, Alexander Cameron travelled on a Grand Tour throughout Europe. After arriving in the Papal States, Alexander Cameron stayed at the Palazzo Muti in Rome, the home and the government in exile of Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, who was known to Whigs as "The Old Pretender" and to Jacobites as, "The King over the Water." Through the influence of his uncle, Alan Cameron, Alexander Cameron was granted a position as an honorary gentleman of the bedchamber to the Prince. He would have joined both his Royal master and Maria Clementina Sobieska, the Queen in exile, at formal Roman Feasts, which would also have involved attending the Tridentine Mass when it was accompanied by the liturgical polyphony of Palestrina, Tomas Luis de Vittoria, and many other great composers like them. These experiences are believed to have had an enormous influence upon his future spiritual development.

During his time in Rome, Alexander Cameron converted to Catholicism. Dom Odo Blundell suspected that Alexander Cameron was, "possibly led thereto", by his future Jesuit colleagues, Charles and John Farqhuarson. In reality, a 1730 letter by Alexander Cameron from Boulogne to his brother, Donald Cameron of Lochiel, and which was first published in a 1994 issue of the Innes Review, attributes his conversion solely to the influence of their uncle Allan Cameron, a fellow household servant of the Prince and Princess who had played a great part in the Jacobite rebellion of 1715.

In the same letter, Alexander Cameron explained that, while in Rome, he had expressed his desire to become a Catholic to the Stuart king and queen in exile. Both Prince James Francis Edward and Princess Maria Clementina were reportedly overjoyed and immediately arranged for their household servant's instruction and reception into the Catholic Church. According to biographer Wynne, the name of the priest who instructed the future Jesuit, as well as the precise location and date of Alexander Cameron's reception into the Roman Catholic Church are still unknown.

In the letter sent from Boulogne in 1730, Alexander Cameron wrote to his brother Donald to explain his reasons for converting:

″I doubt not that a piece of extraordinary news, as that of my being converted to the Catholick Faith, and quitting of the religion in which I was bred up, and educat, will at first surprise you and my Relations. I should be sorrie ever to do anything wherby I would run the risque of incurring the displeasure of a Brother whome I so much love and esteeme; but in an affaire of so great Consequence as this is, and wherupon alone my eternall Salvation depends, my first duty is to God."

Cameron's letters indicate that he understood his family would be upset with his religious conversion, but explained, "The missfortoune of such as have been borne in protestante Countreys is that they heard and knowe all that can be invented or said against the Catholick Religion (which upon examination they would soon finde to be calumny) but they never have occasion to know what can be said for them..."

He only asked that they would still remain in contact with him,

"For my parte I'm fully resolved, with God's grace, to spend all the time that He will be pleased to allow me in this world in His Service, and endeavour, as much as I can to make up the time I have misspent, it is true my past life hase been wilde, but God's mercie is greate, and is readier to grant us pardon that we are to asked it. I have seen most of the splendoure and riches of this World, and have had occasion to be in some of its most beautifull Countreys but never could find out real happiness or contentment in it: and I thank God for it, I only now can say that, I have founde reall riches in possessing nothing. I have no check of conscience and if I could with all this flatter myselfe that my Brothers and Relations had the same regard for me as formerly, my happiness would be compleate; if they have not God forgive them, I do. If I cannot have the pleasure of seeing you and liveing in the same Countrey with you, let me have the satisfaction, at a distance, of being loved by you as one Brother ought to be by an other; if we never are to meet let me at least have the pleasure of corresponding with you, and heareing from you. I have no other favoure nowe to aske of you and my Relations but the continuance of your love and affections to me as formerly; for money I neither want any at present, or ever will put you to any trouble upon that account."

At the end of the same letter, Alexander Cameron issued instructions to his brother about who within the family was to be given his arms, as giving all one's personal weapons away to male relatives is customary for Gaels who were choosing to enter the clergy or monastic life.

In another letter, Alexander Cameron tells Donald why he thinks that the Clan Cameron should revert to Catholicism and laments that both their clan and dynasty had left the Catholic Church in Scotland. He reminded Donald that their ancestor, the 15th-century Chief, Eòghann Beag mac Ailein Cameron, had built seven Catholic churches throughout Lochaber as an act of penance. Cameron also condemned what he called the secularist tendency among many members of the Protestant faiths to leave religion only to their ministers, rather than the laity seeking to serve God themselves or seeking religious truth in the world around them.

According to Wynne, the 1730 letter in which Alexander Cameron explained the reasons for his conversion to his older brother was considered so important that Donald Cameron of Lochiel bound all 48 handwritten pages in calf-skin leather. The resulting volume is now preserved at the National Library of Scotland, while a partial copy remains in the Clan Cameron museum in Achnacarry Castle.

Seminary studies

The Jesuit Church in Tournai where Fr. Alexander Cameron made his vows in 1736

Alexander Cameron travelled to Douai in 1730. In a 1731 Italian language petition to Franz Retz, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, and which still survives, Cameron explained that he had applied to the Scots College in Douai to be allowed to enter the novitiate in Tournai, but had been told that there was difficulty in admitting him. There was already another Scottish novice studying in Tournai and the Scots College could not afford to pay 300 florins a year for another. Reminding the Superior General that he had recently done so for an Irish novice, Cameron asked that the local Jesuit Provincial be ordered to admit him gratis. Cameron also requested, as he was already somewhat older than the usual Jesuit postulant, that he be exempted from teaching after completing his theology studies, as he was also anxious to instead be sent home to serve in the Scottish mission.

The 3 Colleges at Douai.

Alexander Cameron entered the Society of Jesus at Tournai on 30 September 1734 and took his first vows there on 1 October 1736. He then studied theology for four years at Douai and did his tertianship for seven months at Armentières. He was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1740, and returned to Scotland in June 1741.

According to a 1994 article for Innes Review by Thomas Wynne, "It is hard to imagine that the arrival of his brother Alexander was any more more welcome to Lochiel than that of the Young Pretender four years later... the contemporary Whig writer's judgment ( concerning the Clan's boast of steady Protestantism since the Reformation) that, 'Popish priests ... [were] surprised at their resolution on this point', has a particular relevance to the family's only Catholic clergyman."

Writing in 1746, Rev. Alexander MacBean, the Church of Scotland minister of Inverness (Scottish Gaelic: Inbhir Nis), alleged, "The Camerons boast of their being Protestant, and Lochiel hindered the priest his brother to preach among them, when he told them he would bring them from their villainous habit of thieving, if he would allow them to preach, and say Mass among them. His answer was that the people of Glengarry, Knoidart, Arisaig, etc, who were professed papists, were greater thieves than his people, and if he would bring these to be honest and industrious, he would then consider his proposal as to the Camerons, and till he would bring that good work to a bearing, he forbad him to meddle with his people."

According to Wynne, there is considerable documentary evidence that Lochiel and his younger brother Alexander cared deeply for one another and the decision to assign Cameron to the Frasers and Chisholms of Strathglass, rather than as a missionary in his native district, is far more likely to have been made by their "uncle" (in reality their father's first cousin), Bishop Hugh MacDonald. This is consistent, according to S.A. MacWilliam, with how the Catholic Church was organized at a time when Scotland was still considered a mission territory and therefore subject to the Congregation for the Propaganda of the Faith. All priests, including Jesuits and those from other religious orders, were assigned to particular missionary fields by the Vicar Apostolic of the Highland District.

The cave in Glen Cannich

The River Glass running through Strathglass.

Cameron lived with and shared his priestly ministry in Strathglass with two fellow Jesuits whom he had first met as fellow seminarians in Douai. John Farquharson (Scottish Gaelic: Maighstir Iain, an-tAthair Iain Mac Fhearchair) was a veteran "heather priest" and early collector of local Scottish Gaelic literature. He often travelled disguised in a kilt and tartan hose to evade capture by the priest hunters. They were also joined by Charles Farquharson (Scottish Gaelic: Maighstir Teàrlach, an t-Athair Teàrlach Mac Fhearchair), Maighstir Iain's brother.

Even reports from anti-Catholic sources confirm that Cameron was very successful as a missionary in the country of Clan Chisholm and Clan Fraser. For example, in a 27 April 1743 report from Dingwall (Scottish Gaelic: Inbhir Pheofharain) to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, local Presbyterian ministers noted that Cameron, who "hath lately settled in the part of Strathglass that pertains to Lord Lovet, and is employed as a Poppish Missionary in that neighbourhood and Glenstrathfarrar, and trafficks with great success; and he hath great advantage by his connection with the inhabitants of Lochaber, which gives the people in these quarters where he is employed occasion to suppose that is in his power to protect them and their cattle from the invasions of the people of that country, or to avenge himself upon them by their means, by which the few Protestants that are there are most discouraged and kept in perpetual terror; several arguments and methods said to be used by him would more become a country where Popery had the advantage of law in its favour than places that are under a Protestant Government, by which all means find that a greater number have been perverted to Popery in these parts within the last few months than thirty years before. The Presbytery do instruct their Commissioners to urge the General Assembly to take the matters above mentioned to their serious and reasonable consideration, and endeavour to procure the Assembly's particular recommendation to the Committee for Reformation of the Highlands to take special care for providing these corners, not only with a well-qualified preacher, but also with a Catechist and Schoolmaster, and that the Assembly give proper order for executing the laws against Messrs. John Farquharson and Alexander Cameron."

Glen Cannich. River between Loch Mullardoch (far right) and Loch Carrie

During his Victorian era interviews with Alexander Chisholm of Craskie, the grandnephew of Fr. John Farquharson's clerk, The Celtic Magazine correspondent Colin Chisholm was shown the three priests' former residence and secret Mass house, which was located inside a cave still referred to as (Scottish Gaelic: Glaic na h'eirbhe, lit. "the hollow of the hard-life"), and which was located underneath the cliff of a big boulder at Brae of Craskie, near Beauly (Scottish Gaelic: A' Mhanachainn) in Glen Cannich (Scottish Gaelic: Gleann Chanaich). Odo Blundell considered Colin Chisholm's sources of information to be credible and used his article as a source.

When Cameron's conversion letter was first published in a 1994 issue of Innes Review, Wynne commented about the cave dwelling, "It was in the nature of a summer shieling (Scottish Gaelic: Àirigh), a command centre for monitoring the traditional activities of cattle reivers; as such it combined a civilising role with the building up of a Catholic mission outside Cameron territory in a way which must have reassured Lochiel on both counts."

This secret cave dwelling commanded a wide view of the surrounding landscape, which further allowed the three Jesuits to keep watch for priest hunters or detachments of redcoats coming to arrest them. The cave at Brae of Craskie accordingly remained the centre of the Catholic mission in Lochaber at the time, where Cameron and the two brothers secretly ministered to the local Catholics and, whenever possible, they secretly visited the covert "Mass houses" at Fasnakyle, Crochail, Strathfarrar (Scottish Gaelic: Srath Farair), and at Balanahaun.

Cameron caught what is believed to have been pneumonia and almost died at this residence due to its coldness, but still refused to retreat to Beaufort Castle because he considered it his priestly duty to minister to the people of Glen Cannich throughout the winter. On 26 January 1743, Lord Lovat, a practicing Catholic whose changes of allegiance attracted the nickname "the Fox" (Scottish Gaelic: an t-Sionnach), wrote from Beaufort Castle to Lochiel, begging him to order his brother to the castle, where Lovat promised to "furnish him with all the conveniences of Life". Lovat further pleaded with Lochiel, saying, "I beg you to use your endeavours to get an order from his superiors to make him remove to a milder climate; they cannot in honor and conscience refuse it, for he has done already more good to his Church than any ten of his profession has done these ten years past, except your uncle (Bishop Hugh MacDonald) who is so famous for making converts."Cameron still refused to go.

On 1 May 1744, the presbytery of Inverness resolved that something had to be done urgently about, "the great growth of Popery in the country of Strathglass where Allexr. Cameron and John Farquharson, Popish priests, have been trafficking for considerable time past and have their constant residence and their public Mass-houses". An appeal was made to the General Assembly, "that the Assembly may fall on effective methods to stop this contagion and particularly that they appoint a committee of their number to represent this matter to the Lord Justices Clerk, that the law may be put into execution against these priests, and proper orders given for demolishing these Mass-houses". The Presbytery further reported that the Chief of Clan Chisholm had recently, "promised to protect the officers of the law in demolishing the Mass-houses in his ground, and the Presbytery expect the same of the Lord Lovat, his Lordship having written to this Presbytery, that he would, what in him lay, discourage priests and Popery in his bounds."

Whenever it was not possible for the three priests to safely leave Glen Cannich, their parishioners would come to the cave at Brae of Craskie for Mass, the sacraments, and, especially, for the illegal Catholic baptisms of their children. A Bullaun, or natural cup stone, known as (Scottish Gaelic: Clach a Bhaistidh, lit. "the stone of the baptism") was used by the three priests as a baptismal font. According to The Celtic Magazine correspondent Colin Chisholm, the cup stone had been used for performing baptisms in Strathglass, "from time immemorial".

In July of 1744, the Presbytery of Inverness announced that they were credibly informed that, in Clan Chisholm territory, "Mass was being said publicly in a house built for that purpose while the two Mass-houses at Crochail and in Strathfarrar, which had been shut by order of Lord Lovat, were now open again, one of them for the accommodation of Alexander Cameron. It was agreed on 3 July to write to Lord Lovat, desiring him to put such effectual stop to the progress of this priest by demolishing the Mass-houses and turning the priest out of the country."

Shortly before the Jacobite rising of 1745, John Farquharson informed his two colleagues that a detachment sent by the chief of Clan Chisholm was on the way to arrest them. He suggested, "Let us go to meet them then, and save them the trouble of coming all this way for us." Cameron and Charles Farquharson declined this suggestion and, seeking to buy time for his fellow priests to escape, John Farquharson walked towards the detachment, met them, and surrendered to them at a field known as (Scottish Gaelic: Achadh beulath an tuim).

In a 4 September 1744 meeting, the Presbytery announced that they had received assurance from Mr. Shaw of Petty that Lord Lovat had followed their request, the recent arrest of Farqhuarson at Brae of Craskie, and the flight of Cameron and Charles Farquharson from Clan Fraser's territory.

Following his arrest, Farquharson managed to secretly send word to his fellow underground priests in Glengarry country to look after the Catholic population in Strathglass until his return. Charles Farquharson is known to have been hidden by his kinfolk in the vale of Braemar. Cameron, on the other hand, is known to have sought and received the protection of his eldest brother at Achnacarry Castle in Lochaber.

According to Wynne, "Bishop Hugh must have been equally saddened by the news of Farquharson's arrest, and also moved by his heroism and self-sacrifice for his fellow priests. He knew that he had lost one of his finest priests on whom he had come to depend so much. However, he would have been consoled by the fact that Cameron was safe and enjoying a well-earned rest with his family at Achnacarry, where he would be secure, well looked after, and nursed back to health."

The Rising

Main article: Jacobite rising of 1745

Jacobite Standard of the 1745 Uprising.

When Prince Charles Edward Stuart arrived in Scotland, Bishop Hugh MacDonald tried to argue in vain against the Jacobite Rising of 1745, which he considered inopportune and too high risk. Nevertheless, he eventually blessed the standard raised at Glenfinnan. Fr. Alexander Cameron was also one of the priests of the Highland District whom the bishop reluctantly assigned as military chaplains with a captain's rank in the Jacobite Army.

According to the muster roll, Donald Cameron of Lochiel's Jacobite Army Regiment had three military chaplains: Presbyterian minister John Cameron of Fort William, non-jurant Episcopalian Rector Duncan Cameron of Fortingall, and Catholic priest Fr. Alexander Cameron, "brother to Lochiel". Fr. Cameron's other brother, Dr. Archibald Cameron of Lochiel, appears in the muster as "ADC to the Prince."

According to Wynne, Jacobite military chaplains wore their own distinctive tartan, and were equipped with a pistol and a sword, but only as an insignia of their rank. Chaplains were non-combatants, because, as Wynne explains, "the hands that had been anointed to bless and to administer the sacraments would not be raised in anger to strike a foe."

For this reason, Alexander Cameron's duties would have involved saying Mass, administering the sacraments, and caring on the battlefield for the wounded and dying, rather than fighting.

On the evening before the Battle of Culloden, Cameron offered the Tridentine Mass on the battlefield for the Catholics of his regiment, while wearing a tartan chasuble.

The Year of the Pillaging

After Culloden: Rebel Hunting by John Seymour Lucas depicts the rigorous search for Jacobites during (Scottish Gaelic: Bliadhna nan Creach) "The Year of the Pillaging".

Wynne believes Alexander Cameron was one of those who barely escaped arrest when the redcoats surprised a secret clan gathering near Achnacarry Castle on 15 May 1746, before going back into hiding. He also believes that this was the reason why, instead of escaping to France like Bishop MacDonald, Prince Charles and his own brothers, Fr. Cameron remained behind in Lochaber. Alexander's youngest brother, John Cameron of Fassiefern, had not been involved in the rising and also remained in Scotland and was reportedly looted afterwards by government troops under the command of Captain Caroline Scott.

His biographer Thomas Wynne believes that Fr. Alexander Cameron fled first from the gathering near Achnacarry Castle to Borrodale Bay, and then remained in hiding along the Atlantic coast of the Rough Bounds near Morar and Arisaig. According to historian Odo Blundell, the population of this region remained staunchly Roman Catholic and, more importantly, Borrodale Bay, Morar, and Arisaig were part of the estates of Clan MacDonald of Clanranald, which, unlike those of the other Jacobite Clan Chiefs, had escaped forfeiture to the Crown by using a minor loophole under Scots property law. Furthermore, Alexander Cameron's kinsman, Hugh MacDonald, the underground Catholic Bishop and Vicar General of the Highland District, was also hiding in the same region until he managed to escape to France, as were at least two other priests.

The sands at Morar.

Even so, in early to mid July 1746, Fr. Cameron was surprised and captured by a detachment of Redcoats commanded by Captain McNiel while hiding on a beach near Morar (Scottish Gaelic: Mòrar) and was handed over to Royal Navy Captain John Fergussone (c.1708-1767), whose ship was then cruising off the island of Raasay (Scottish Gaelic: Ratharsair).

H.M.S. Furnace

Captain Fergussone, a native of Old Meldrum, near Inverurie (Scottish Gaelic: Inbhir Uaraidh) in Aberdeenshire, was, according to non-juring Scottish Episcopal Church Bishop Robert Forbes, "a man remarkable for his cruelties... Even in his younger years he was remarkable for a cruel turn of mind among his school fellows and companions, and therefore he is the fitter tool for William the Cruel."

According to historian John Watts, during "the year of the pillaging", Captain Fergussone and his crew, "[were] responsible for so much destruction and death on the West Coast", that even though more than two centuries have passed since the total war tactics that accompanied his quest for Jacobites and for the £30,000 bounty promised for the capture of the Prince, Fergussone's name remains notorious.

Aboard H.M.S. Furnace, Fr. Cameron joined fellow prisoners Fr. James Grant of Barra, Lord Lovat, the 70-year old Chief of Clan MacKinnon, the two men who smuggled Prince Charles Edward from Skye to Morar, all 38 Jacobite Army veterans from Eigg, briefly Flora MacDonald, at least two non-jurant Episcopal ministers, and many other Catholic priests.

In addition to Fergussone's allegedly routine use of flogging with the cat o' nine tails and torture using "Barisdale's machine" to extract both confessions and secret information from his prisoners, according to the Jesuit's sister in law, Jean Cameron of Dungallon, Captain Fergussone similarly "brutalised" Fr. Cameron by denying him a bed and instead placing him in iron chains among the ropes and cables of the Furnace as she cruised up and down the notoriously cold and rainy west coast of Scotland. This behaviour was not only motivated by anti-Catholicism, as Captain Fergussone treated non-juring Episcopal ministers aboard the Furnace, with the same deliberate and unnecessary cruelty. According to historian John S. Gibson, "Captain John Fergussone [was] an Aberdeenshire man with an Aberdeenshire man's antipathy towards Highlanders".

According to statements to Robert Forbes by his sister in law, Fr. Cameron fell seriously ill as a result of these conditions and complaints were duly made about Fergussone's treatment of Lochiel's brother to senior officers in the British armed forces. In response to these complaints, Lord Albemarle, who had replaced the Duke of Cumberland as British Army Commander in Chief for Scotland, assigned a doctor to visit the prisoners aboard HMS Furnace. After the doctor, "returned and said if Mr. Cameron was not brought ashore or was better assisted he must die soon by neglect and ill-usage", Lord Albemarle immediately sent a party aboard "with an order to Ferguson to deliver up Mr. Cameron". In reply, Captain Fergussone, "said he was his prisoner and he would not deliver him up to any person without an express order from the Duke of Newcastle or the Lords of the Admiralty". Other friends of the priest then attempted to deliver proper bedding and "other necessities" to the Furnace, but Captain Fergussone, "swore if they offered to put them on board he would sink them and their boat directly. The Captain soon afterwards sailed..."

According to Thomas Wynne, as HMS Furnace sailed around the North of Scotland via Inverness towards London, each prisoner was to be given a daily ration of 1/2 lbs. of food, "brought in foul nasty buckets", and into which, according to survivors, Fergussone's crew occasionally used to urinate, "as an ill-natured diversion". Due to severe overcrowding, however, even this ration of food was often diluted with seawater or withheld completely. Furthermore, an epidemic of typhus broke out in the hold and many prisoners succumbed to the disease or the deliberate starvation well before the ship ever reached the River Thames. At such times, both the dead and even emaciated prisoners who were still dying were taken out of the hold and thrown into the sea.

Death and burial

Portsmouth Harbour with Prison Hulks, painted by French corsair and survivor of eight years incarceration aboard Royal Navy prison hulks Ambroise Louis Garneray (1783-1857).

By the time HMS Furnace finally reached the Thames and anchored off the coast of Gravesend as a prison hulk for those too ill to be transferred elsewhere or transported to the British West Indies for sale to the sugar planters, Fr. Cameron was already near death. By this time, an estimated 900 real and suspected Jacobites were imprisoned aboard the H.M.S. Furnace and the other prison hulks anchored in the Thames, under similarly inhumane and insanitary conditions, which are confirmed by Whig eyewitnesses and primary sources, such as the inspection reports of surgeon Dr. Minshaw.

According to Wynne, "The total mortality in the prison ships must have been enormous because of the semi-starvation, disease, and semi-clad condition of the men. It is estimated that out of the first batch of five hundred and sixty four prisoners transported to the Thames in June 1746, one hundred and fifty seven died in five weeks after their arrival. Captain Fergussone was particularly bitter against Roman Catholic priests and the non-jurant Episcopal ministers, and this was borne out in his personal vindictiveness against Fr Cameron. From the evidence that is available, it appears that Fr Alexander was not transferred to the prison hulks at anchor in the Thames, but was kept aboard the Furnace, by Fergussone, in the hell-hole which he had endured for more than four months. He was a desperately ill man by now. As a result of the ravages of starvation, rampant infection, disease, the cold and damp, which he could not resist with such flimsy clothing, his condition was weakening all the time. He had now lost the comfort and consolation of his fellow priests, as they had been transferred to other ships, and those prisoners who were left in the stinking hold of the Furnace were by this stage probably too weak to be moved and would have died if an attempt had been made to transfer them."

Robert Forbes wrote about the Furnace in The Lyon in Mourning, Forbes continued, "the beef they got was so bad and black that they could not take it for anything else but horse flesh or carrion. ...When Donald [MacLeod] was asked how the beef went down with them, he replied, (Modern Scots: 'O what is it that will not go down wi' a hungry stomack? I can assure you we made no scruple to eat anything that came our way.')."

Forbes continues, "Almost all those that were in the same ship with Donald and Malcolm [MacLeod] were once so sick that they could scarcely stretch out their hands to one another... at last there was a general sickness that raged among all the prisoners on board the different ships, which could not fail to be the case when (as both Donald and Malcolm positively affirmed) they were sometimes fed with the beeves that had died of the disease that was then raging among the horned cattle in England."

St George's Church in Gravesend, Kent with a statue of Pocahontas in the foreground.

After Captain Fergussone grudgingly allowed Fr. John Farquarson to board HMS Furnace to minister to his dying fellow priest, an emaciated Fr. Cameron offered the Tridentine Mass while Fr. John Farquharson served him at the altar. Soon after, Fr. Alexander Cameron died, after first receiving Holy Communion and the Last Rites, and with Fr. Farquarson by his side on 19 October 1746. Fr. Cameron's remains were taken ashore and buried in un-consecrated ground in the nearest graveyard to the ship; the Church of England cemetery attached to St George's Church, Gravesend, which also holds the grave of Pocahontas.

According to a 1973 article by S.A. MacWilliam for Innes Review, the news soon reached Cameron's fellow Jesuits at the Scots College in Douai. On 2 January, 1747, the Rector, Fr. Alexander Crookshank, wrote to Fr. Franz Retz, the General of the Society of Jesus, "I have lately received news of the wretched and afflicted state of our mission. We have lost that fine missionary and religious, Fr. Alex. Cameron, who was captured in June last and put in chains in a man-of-war where he bore all kinds of insults and cruelty with unconquerable patience and Christian fortitude and where he contracted a deadly disease. He was finally taken to the fort of Tilbury (sic) where he died last month (sic). Frs. John and Charles Farquarson are imprisoned in the same place."

According to the Gravesend Historical Society, the surrounding area was very anti-Catholic and anti-Jacobite in the 1740s and Catholics or Jacobites who died locally were listed in burial records as "unknown", even if their names were known. Alexander Cameron, therefore, is believed to rest in an unmarked grave whose location cannot be precisely determined.

Veneration and Roman Catholic Sainthood Cause

A fragment of the tartan chasuble worn by Fr. Alexander Cameron as he offered Mass on the night before the Battle of Culloden is still preserved as a relic by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Argyll and the Isles at the Manse of St Columba's Cathedral in Oban. As of 2011, the relic, which has been donated to the Diocese following Catholic Emancipation in 1829 by Angus John Campbell, 20th hereditary Captain of Dunstaffnage Castle, was on loan to the Clan Cameron Museum at Achnacarry Castle in Lochaber.

St Mary's Roman Catholic Church, Beauly.

According to The Celtic Magazine correspondent Colin Chisholm, the Bullaun, or natural cup stone, known as (Scottish Gaelic: Clach a Bhaistidh) and used by the three Jesuits to perform secret Catholic baptisms in the cave at Glen Cannich, was removed from the cave, "in order to protect it from damage", by Black Watch Regiment Captain Archibald Macrae Chisholm, the widowed husband of Fr John and Charles Farquharson's grandniece, as a memorial to his late wife. Captain Chisholm placed the font upon a stone column, where it is now venerated as a relic on the grounds of St Mary and St. Bean's Roman Catholic Church at Marydale, Beauly, Glen Cannich.

Cameron also appears in a 1927-1929 tapestry commissioned by John Crichton-Stuart, 4th Marquess of Bute entitled The Prayer for Victory, Prestonpans 1745 by William Skeoch Cummings. The tapestry depicts the Cameron Regiment of the Jacobite Army kneeling in prayer before the Battle of Prestonpans. Fr. Cameron is shown genuflecting in the left.

In 2011, after decades of research with the assistance of the Lochiel family, Monsignor Thomas Wynne (1930 - 2020), a priest of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Argyll and the Isles long assigned to St. Margaret's Church in Roybridge (Scottish Gaelic: Drochaid Ruaidh), Lochaber, self-published a book-length biography of Cameron, "The Forgotten Cameron of the '45: The Life and Times of Alexander Cameron S.J.".

See also

Scottish Protestant Martyrs

• List of Protestant martyrs of the Scottish Reformation

Catholic Martyrs

• Saint John Ogilvie
• John Black (martyr)
• George Douglas (martyr)
• William Gibson (martyr)
• John Ingram (martyr)
• Patrick Primrose

Further reading

Books

• Odo Blundell (1909), The Catholic Highlands of Scotland. Volume I: The Central Highlands, Sands & Co., 21 Hanover Street, Edinburgh, 15 King Street, London.
• Odo Blundell (1917), The Catholic Highlands of Scotland. Volume II: The Western Highlands and Islands, Sands & Co., 37 George Street, Edinburgh, 15 King Street, Covent Garden, London.
• Robert Forbes (1895), The Lyon in Mourning: Or a Collection of Speeches, Letters, Journals Etc., Relative to the Affairs of Prince Charles Edward Stuart. Volume I, Printed at the University Press by T. and A. Constable for the Scottish History Society.
• Robert Forbes (1895), The Lyon in Mourning: Or a Collection of Speeches, Letters, Journals Etc., Relative to the Affairs of Prince Charles Edward Stuart. Volume II, Printed at the University Press by T. and A. Constable for the Scottish History Society.
• Robert Forbes (1895), The Lyon in Mourning: Or a Collection of Speeches, Letters, Journals Etc., Relative to the Affairs of Prince Charles Edward Stuart. Volume III, Printed at the University Press by T. and A. Constable for the Scottish History Society.
• John S. Gibson (1967), Ships of the Forty-Five: The Rescue of the Young Pretender, Hutchinson & Co. London. With a Preface by Sir James Fergusson of Kilkerran, Bart., L.L.D.
• Charles MacDonald (2011), Moidart: Among the Clanranalds, Birlinn Limited
• John Watts (2004), Hugh MacDonald: Highlander, Jacobite, Bishop, John Donald Press.
• Thomas Wynne (2011), The Forgotten Cameron of the '45: The Life and Times of Alexander Cameron S.J, Print Smith, Fort William, Scotland

Periodicals

• "Rev. John Farquharson, Priest of Strathglass", by Colin Chisholm, The Celtic Magazine, Volume 7 1882, pp. 141-146.
• "A Highland Mission: Strathglass, 1671-1777", by Very Rev. Alexander Canon Mac William, Volume XXIV, Innes Review, pp. 75-102.
• "The Conversion of Alexander Cameron", by Thomas Wynne, Volume XLV, Innes Review, Autumn 1994, pp. 178-187.

External links

• Flower of Scotland by Joseph Pearce, from the essay series "The Unsung Heroes of Christendom", Crisis Magazine, May 18, 2024.
• The Catholic Mission in Strathglass. Fr. Æneas Mackenzie’s Memoirs of 1846, Official Website for the International Clan Chisholm Society
• Clan Cameron Museum Official Website (Includes photographs of Alexander Cameron's 1730 conversion letter, the surviving piece of his tartan priestly vestments, and the "Prayer for Victory" Tapestry)
• History of the Marydale Church, From the Website "Christianity in Strathglass." (Includes a photograph of the Baptismal Font from the Cave at Brae of Craskie in Glen Cannich).